Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin (18 December 1878-5 March 1953) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 3 April 1922 to 16 October 1952, succeeding Vyacheslav Molotov and preceding Nikita Khrushchev. As head of the Communist Party, Stalin was the de facto leader of the Soviet Union, having seized power after a struggle with his rival, Leon Trotsky. Stalin advocated his own brand of communism known as Stalinism, which combined communist economic policy with far-right and totalitarian dictatorship and repression. From 1936 to 1938, he had most of his generals purged in the "Great Purge", ensuring that nobody could rival him. Stalin became an ally of the Allied Powers in 1941 when Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in a surprise attack during World War II, ensuring that the Soviets would have the right to retaliate at the war's end. The USSR occupied Eastern Europe and set up several satellite governments, crushing all uprisings there. Stalin's death in 1953 led to the moderate Khrushchev becoming the new Soviet leader, and he de-Stalinized the USSR.

Biography
Joseph Stalin was born "Ioseb Besarionis dze Jugashvili" in Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire (now the Republic of Georgia). Jugashvili's alcoholic father left the family after he was exiled for attacking a police chief,  and he became an atheist on the first year of his seminary studies, ending his chances of becoming a priest. In 1903, he eagerly joined Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks and distributed propaganda, organized strikes, and raised funds through bank robberies, kidnappings, extortion, and assassinations. He was arrested and sent to Siberia several times, but he managed to escape each time. In 1911, he began to use the name "Stalin" in his writings, and his name meant "steel" in Russian.

Russian Revolution
Stalin was rejected from the Imperial Russian Army during World War I due to an arm injury, and he stayed in Achinsk, Siberia. He returned to Petrograd from exile and ousted Vyacheslav Molotov from being the editor of Pravda, supporting Alexander Kerensky's democratic socialist government. However, he supported Lenin after the October Revolution, and he became Commissar for Nationalities' Affairs. He allied with Red Army generals Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, and he began to impose his influence on the military while opposing general Leon Trotsky. Stalin ordered for renegades and deserters to be publicly executed, had former tsarist officers in the Red Army and counter-revolutionaries executed, and had villages burned down to threaten peasants and to discourage bandits from attacking food shipments.

Rise to power
Stalin resigned from the military in August 1920 after command disasters in Poland, but Lenin named him General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1922, with Stalin and Lev Kamenev bringing allied Bolsheviks into power. Stalin went against many of Lenin's policies, treating his homeland of Georgia with a hardline approach after its conquest by the USSR, and he pushed for rapid industrialization and for military expansion. Stalin also wanted for the Communist Party of China to ally with the Kuomintang rather than attempt a communist revolution, and he said that the Kuomintang should be treated like a lemon; squeezed of their usefulness before being discarded. In December 1934, the murder of Sergei Kirov was blamed on Trotsky, forcing him into exile and leading to the "Great Purge" against perceived threats to Stalin's authoritarian rule. All of the surviving members of Lenin's original cabinet were put to death, and 700,000 people were killed by Stalin, who also persecuted Germans, Koreans, and non-Russians; 110,000 Poles were executed. Stalin deported Volga Germans, Koreans, Chechens, and Poles to Kazakhstan and other areas of Central Asia, and he purged the well-off "kulak" peasants in 1930, killing 20,201 of them.

War with Germany
Stalin became the face of communism during the 1930s, making the ideology seem like an authoritarian threat. For this reason, the USSR was politically isolated among Western countries, and it formed Comintern to promote cooperation among the few communist and socialist countries of the world. Measures were taken to stop the communist threat in Europe, with several countries signing the Nazi-written Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936 and 1937. In 1939, Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany,